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Rare Chinese Cat Captured on Film
I am biased by my love of cats but I hope this helps conservation efforts.
Related: Origins of the Domestic Cat - Bornean Clouded Leopard - Far Eastern Leopard, the Rarest Big Cat - Making the Cat the Photographer - Jaguars Back in the Southwest USA - Wild Tiger Survival at Risk
Can’t Cut This by Kathleen M. Wong, ScienceMatters@Berkeley:
Proteases are enzymes that snip proteins. They recognize certain strings of amino acids on a substrate protein, bind to this area, then break a nearby chemical bond. Proteases can destroy proteins by snipping them in half, as in malaria. They can also activate proteins by lopping off atoms covering a reactive site.
This versatility has made proteases critical to all manner of organisms, from viruses to plants to humans. Over the past 10 years, protease inhibitor drugs have become indispensable in the fight against AIDS, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But finding protease inhibitors is no picnic. Humans manufacture tens of thousands of proteins; figuring out which of these a protease targets is extremely challenging and time consuming.
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Instead of mixing liquid chemicals and painstakingly purifying them again at each step, he attaches his precursor molecules to polystyrene beads resembling sand grains.
Robotics Engineering Degree at Worcester Polytechnic Institute:
In this program, you will be building robots during your first year of study. You will not find this hands-on approach to Robotics anywhere else but WPI.
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Students graduating from the Robotics Engineering program will have many options for future employment across a wide range of industries including national defense and security, elder care, automation of household tasks, customized manufacturing, and interactive entertainment. New England is home to a strong and growing Robotics industry. Massachusetts alone boasts over 150 companies, institutions and research labs in the Robotics sector, employing more than 1,500 people.
Interesting. via: eContent. Related: Toyota Robots - Tour the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab - Applied Engineering Education - Best Research University Rankings - 2007
Preparing to Lead: Internships pair students with executives
As part of a new internship program, Xia spent three months working with senior marketing executives at the IBM corporate offices in Somers, N.Y. From analyzing the brand’s image to establishing a business case for a new product launch, he found himself in the midst of the complicated intricacies of the business world.
“Unlike technical problem-solving where everything is black and white, problem-solving in business deals heavily with people and customers who have many different viewpoints,” Xia said. “In business, there are various shades of gray, which make things exciting and interesting.”
Related: science internships - engineering internships - Google Summer of Code 2007 - The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program
Motorola Supports National Engineering Education Initiative with $1 Million Grant
Related: k-12 Engineering Education - Middle School Engineers - $40 Million for Engineering Education in Boston - Lead the Way in Cleveland - posts on science and engineering primary education
Publishers prepare for war over open access
Lined up against them are the academic publishers. The idea of open-access journals is frightening for an industry whose profits are based on subscription charges.
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Dezenhall’s strategy includes linking open access with government censorship and junk science – ideas that to me seem quite bizarre and misleading. Last month, however, the AAP launched a lobby group called the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine (PRISM), which uses many of the arguments that Dezenhall suggested.
It is sad to see journals that were founded to promote science so flawed in their thinking today. As I said last month in Science Journal Publishers Stay Stupid: “It is time for the scientific community to give up on these journals and start looking to move to work with new organizations that will encourage scientific communication and advancement (PLoS - arXiv.org - Open Access Engineering Journals) and leave those that seek to keep outdated practices to go out of business.” Organizations can’t ignore principles when choosing tactics. Tactics that might be ok in other situations, should not be acceptable to scientists publishing scientific information. When journals move to harm science to preserve their outdated business practices they deserve to lose the respect of scientists.
Related: Finding Open Scientific Papers - Open Access Journal Wars - Anger at Anti-Open Access PR - Open Access Article Advantage
Above: The humanoid robot REEM-A walk among people at Wired Nextfest 2007. Cool webcasts from Wired NextFest 2007 in Los Angeles:
Human-Carrying Walking Robot
Multi-Touch Collaboration Screen - There are two very wide (around 16 foot wide) LCD screen. You can drag and move object like the scene in the Minority Report.
Wired NextFest Highlights - Shot by Mark Hefflinger and edited by Graham Kolbeins for Digital Media Wire
Wired Nextfest Executive Director Discusses Tech Future
Hanson Robotics talks Zeno
Highlights of the 2006 Wired NextFest Expo in New York City
Related: Humanoid Robot (HRP-3 Promet Mk-II) - Robo-Salamander - Northwest FIRST Robotics Competition
Cool science answer. Related: Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - 10 Science Facts You Should Know
CMU professor gives his last lesson on life by Mark Roth:
It was the virtual reality work, in which participants wear a headset that puts them in an artificial digital environment, that earned him and his Carnegie Mellon students a chance to go on the U.S. Air Force plane known as the “vomit comet,” which creates moments of weightlessness, and which the students promised to model with VR technology.
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“A recent CT scan showed that there are 10 tumors in my liver, and my spleen is also peppered with small tumors. The doctors say that it is one of the most aggressive recurrences they have ever seen.”
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“I find that I am completely positive,” he wrote. “The only times I cry are when I think about the kids — and it’s not so much the ‘Gee, I’ll miss seeing their first bicycle ride’ type of stuff as it is a sense of unfulfilled duty — that I will not be there to help raise them, and that I have left a very heavy burden for my wife.”
An inspirational story. For me personally, it reminds me of my father: Bill Hunter who honestly believed, as he was stricken with cancer, he was luckier than most people that have ever lived. He was able to do many things that no-one, not even Kings, could have dreamed of even a hundred years before. I can’t manage such an outlook most of the time, but I do try and keep that spirit alive in me at times. William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement by George Box.
Related: Video of the lecture - Randy Pausch - Helping people have better lives - The Importance of Management Improvement
Scores ill in Peru ‘meteor crash’
People who have visited scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases. A team of scientists is on its way to the site to collect samples and verify whether it was indeed a meteorite.
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The object then hit the ground, leaving a 30m (98ft) wide and 6m (20ft) deep crater. The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases. The gases are believed to have affected the health of about 600 people who visited the site.
Related: Meteorite, Older than the Sun, Found in Canada - Meteorite Lands in New Jersey Bathroom - NASA Tests Robots at Meteor Crater - Doubts About Meteorite-Induced Sickness - Meteorite causes a stir in Peru
Scientists are working on many fronts to keep deadly bacteria in check
At the same time, germs we once fought off with antibiotics are fighting back, forcing governments and health organizations worldwide to spend billions of dollars to find new remedies.
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Redinbo is part of a team that recently discovered that two osteoporosis drugs block a key site on E. coli bacteria, preventing it from passing antibiotic resistance genes to other E. coli.
By their nature, bacteria exchange pieces of their DNA with neighboring bacteria, leading to new forms that are virulent or resistant — or both. “This is not minor evolution,” said Irina Artsimovitch, associate professor of microbiology at Ohio State. “This is a huge genome exchange.”
Very cool stuff. Related: Antibiotic resistance: How do antibiotics kill bacteria? - Disrupting the Replication of Bacteria - Antibiotics Too Often Prescribed for Sinus Woes - Attacking Bacterial Walls
British Wave Hub Gets The Go Ahead
Related: Ocean Power Plant - Wave Energy - World’s First Commercial-Scale Subsea Turbine - Wind Power
This article is the result of the first Curious Cat engineer interview. My favorite post detailed the great engineering project Jürgen Perthold undertook to engineer a camera that his cat could wear and take photos. So I decided to interview him.
The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer by John Hunter:
The Amazing CatCam is not only a great product but a wonderful engineering story. See our past post for some background on how an engineer allowed you to help your cat become a photographer. On the development of the CatCam Jürgen Perthold says, “More or less it was just a joke, born with a crazy idea.” Such a great sentiment and with wonderful results.
What path led him to the desire and ability to pursue the crazy idea and become the Curious Cat engineer of the year? He was born in Aalen, Germany. He started playing with electronics as he was 13. At 15 he added computer programming and with a friend they programmed games, applications and hardware control over the years. He studied Optoelectronics at the University of Aalen, Germany extending his knowledge further.
For the last few years he has worked for Bosch, an international manufacturing company, in the automotive hardware section. Last summer, he transfered from Germany to Anderson, South Carolina as a resident engineer for transmission control unit in a production plant for automobile parts. On a side note, the United States is still by far the largest manufacturer in the world.
The demand for the cameras is still higher than his capability to produce the cameras. He has raised the price, to limit the demand. When I first saw the prices I couldn’t believe how inexpensive it was. And, in my opinion, they are still a incredible deal. Order your CatCam now: it is a great gadget for yourself or it makes a great unique, gift. Most orders have been from the UK, Germany and the USA.
Most people don’t have technical background so they buy the full unit. But he reports that some brave souls order a kit because of price or availability although they have not done anything similar before. What a great way to challenge yourself and, if you succeed, end up with a wonderful creation when you finish.
He is in discussion with several different groups to ramp up production. The main problem is that producing the device requires electronics, optics, software, mechanics and logistics expertise. So, for the time being, he continues to modify the cameras by hand because no investments are necessary and the production can be scaled according to the demand. The required soldering, electronics and system knowledge makes it a challenge to outsource. So, for now, CatCam production is adding to the USA manufacturing output total. He is also planning to produce more products.
Jürgen believes that getting the cat camera working was not that challenging. You can take a look at his explanation of how he did so to decide for yourself. He does admit that challenges do arise if you want to produce cameras for others. To do that you must create a product that is foolproof, reliable, and easy to use and manufacture.
“I was surprised how famous one can get with ‘boring’ technical engineering stuff. I like this not only for me but for all other engineers out there who daily work hard on challenges which others don’t even understand. We as engineers make the world moving but usually we are not recognized.” Everyone enjoys the products of the labors of engineers (such as cell phones, MP3 players, cars, planes, bridges, internet connections) but few see the required knowledge, work and the people that bring those products into being.
Jürgen “hopes that I made ‘engineering’ a bit more visible to people who did not think about it before, for example, female cat owners who never had a solder iron in the hand and bought plain SOIC chips because they wanted the cat camera…”
I think he has done a great job illustrating the engineering behind the CatCam and making engineering fun. And in so doing hopefully is making more people aware of the engineers that make so many wonderful modern gadgets. Go buy a CatCam now (and if you are adventurous buy the parts and create your own - you will learn a lot about what makes all your modern gadgets work). And then send in the pictures your cat takes so everyone can see the wonderful things engineers make possible.
The photos here show the results of several new cat photographers (Binky the cat [first 2 photos] and Jacquie the cat [last 2]). Only a small percentage of CatCam owners have shared there pictures so far.
Over the next few years he would like to learn to sail, visit Yellowstone national park, walk the Camino de Santiago again, move on to other international assignment (maybe far east) and continuing raising his two children.
The Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog is written by John Hunter and tracks a wide variety of developments, happenings, interesting under-publicized facts, and cool aspects of science and engineering.
Sergey Brin: “So now, we are here today embarking upon this great adventure of having a nongovernmental, commercial organization return to the Moon and explore. And I’m very excited that Google can play a part in it.”
Related: $10 Million for Science Solutions - Lunar Landers X-Prize - DARPA Grand Challenge
Thousands of spiders worked together to build huge web (site broke link so I removed it) by Anna Tinsley:
Researchers say they now believe thousands of spiders from different species worked together to make one huge web — much different from the traditional individual webs that would normally be woven. Together, they’ve built and rebuilt a web that has caught countless bugs and the attention of people nationwide. “These spiders seem to be working together to build it back,” said Zach Lewis, an office clerk at the park. “It’s really something to see.
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“It looked just like a spider would have jumped from tree to tree with a can of silly string.” Researchers say it likely took 1 1/2 to two months to weave such a large web.
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He found spiders from 12 families, with the most prevalent being from the Tetragnathidae family. Identified spiders were funnel web weavers, sac spiders, orb weavers, mesh web weavers, wolf spiders, pirate spiders, jumping spiders and long-jawed orb weavers, according to the researchers’ report.
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“With the amount of rain that has occurred this year and the huge food supply available, it just created the right condition for all of this,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll see it again. But this happened to be a year where the conditions were right.”
Related: 60 Acre (24 hectare) Spider Web - Spider Thread - Giant Wasp Nests
Herr wins $250,000 Heinz Award
Related: The Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment - 2007 Draper Prize to Berners-Lee - Millennium Technology Prize to Dr. Shuji Nakamura
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